Is Facebook Ruining Marriages?

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently got married — but ironically, he may want to keep his new wife off the social media site he founded. A new survey shows divorce cases mentioning Facebook are on the rise.

Divorce Online reports that the number of UK divorce filings containing the word “Facebook” jumped from 20 percent to 33 percent in the last two years alone.

Sometimes it’s in reference to an online affair, but in other instances people took to Facebook to snark about their exes after they split or used their public walls “as weapons in their divorce battle.”

Here in the US, 80 percent of divorce attorneys say they’ve also seen a rise in social networking mentions. Gary Traystman, a lawyer in New London, Conn., says that in the cases he handles where computer history, texts and emails are admitted as evidence, more than half exclusively involve Facebook.

The site has even been used in child custody cases. “It helps me cross-examine a witness,” says Atlanta attorney Randy Kessler. “Any pattern of behavior that’s recorded on Facebook relating to parenting skills, excessive partying or even disparaging remarks about a spouse that violate a court order could be admissible.”

That said, he says no one should blame Facebook itself, adding, “It’s the people who use it.”